Dedicated to preserving the central coordinating
functions of the global
Internet for the public good.

ccTLD News Memo #5 (8 June 1998)

* In this issue: White Paper, Participation, &
Contact Updates

1. White Paper - On June 5, 1998, the US government issued
the much anticipated "White Paper", discussing development of
the Internet and the necessity for formal governance in regards to operation
and coordination of the root servers, coordination of IP addressing, protocol
assigning, and domain name development and coordination.

These tasks will be the responsibility of a new not-for-profit organization,
created and supported by the Internet community. As you may know,
many of these responsibilties are already under the care of IANA, and
the "White Paper" has recognized this, and thus, requests that
the new organization include the personnel and expertise of the current
IANA.

Furthermore, it is our desire that IANA will develop into this new organization.
The current IANA has the necessary expertise as well as solid support
from the Internet community to evolve into this new organization.
However, your support and input is also needed in this process.
Please visit our new website for a more thorough overview of
our vision and more information on this subject.

One of the best ways to be involved and participate in this new process
is to join a regional organization or association of country code administrators.
We are encouraging regional groups of administrators to team up and voice
their concerns and opinions in this process. Currently, there are
two organizations created, CENTR (for Europe administrators) and APCCTLD
(for Asia Pacific administrators), and IANA would like to encourage the
creation of more regional associations among the TLD administrators.
We envision these organizations as important participants in the new IANA.

Specifically, TLD administrators should be participating in the formation
of a Domain Names Council. Tentative plans suggest there will be
councils in four areas: names, addresses, protocols, and user and industry.
When details of this Council are available, you will be notified via this
list. In the interim, please send your comments to comments@iana.org.

We cannot stress enough the importance of your participation in this
process and your participation in the new IANA.

The new IANA web site contains a contact template which should be sent
to iana@iana.org in order to update
any contact information. Much of our contact information is
out of date, so we ask you to please send in a template ASAP in order
to update our records.